East

East London has an incredible mix of culture and multiple communities - from Bangladeshi to Afro-Caribbean. It’s a well-known hotspot and is one of the “youngest” boroughs of London in terms of demographics. From walking down Brick Lane’s “Curry Mile”, to visiting Dalston’s Ridley Road Market, and getting a bite to eat at Rudy’s - there’s a lot here to explore and enjoy. Shoreditch was our base, as this is where the team stayed (The Mondrian Hotel). We went to the various boroughs and centres of East London:

• Brick Lane

• Bethnal Green

• Ridley Road Market

• Hackney Wick

• Clapton

• East Ham

• Walthamstow

Below you can find an overview of the various activities and people that we met in East London.

London African Drumming

Famously telling us “If you know your roots, you can’t get lost” [which we used in the video], we also heard that although all of the musicians at London African Drumming came from different parts of West and East African nations, there was a shared love of playing music that brought them together. The drummers identified the organizer Sue as the connective tissue for establishing their lives in London. For instance, not only does she help them with living arrangements and job placements upon their arrival to the UK from Africa, but she also has introduced them to other African immigrants that they are grateful to have established long-term relationships with over the years.

Dabba Drop Lunch

While talking to us, Anshu spoke about how she felt she gave up some of her ‘cultural alliance’ by marrying a white man, although insisted on living in a diverse area for them to raise their kids. She notes that there are differences but told us “if you cut us we all bleed the same.” 

Importantly, for Anshu, ‘creating’ a home in a new place is rooted in developing friendships and doing things that remind them of home. For her, this is naturally about both language and food.

Bollysass Dance

Interestingly, we heard that they feel their Indian culture is at a stage where it’s akin to being ‘in a second puberty’. Kajeel is always looking at how she can preserve the culture, the people and the place itself in her own teaching and performances. As they explained to us: “India is evolving, and we are as well. Change is happening together in parallel.”

Pedro Boxing Club

As we heard across other communities, the Pedro Club members discussed how religion is decreasing in its importance as an aspect of the community, rather, it is food and sports which are the new ‘churches’ for these generations, places - like the Pedro Club, like Tottenham Hotspurs’ REACH initiative etc., where interests are bringing people together in the community.

Melek Erdal Tour

During the hour with Melek she walked and talked us through the stalls and the area, explaining: “All of my earliest memories are to do with food – I remember very little about life in Istanbul but the pockets of moments in time I do remember all involve food.” As Melek spoke about, the middle-eastern culture has predominantly survived through story-telling, music and food rather than official records or written culture: “How have we survived? We have embraced oral storytelling…through songs, through mythologizing our recent past, through poignant celebration, through dance, through our limerick, ….and our food.” Again, we see this idea of interests forging the communities and helping them to progress and succeed, rather than organized religion and typical churches.

AbdulMaalik Tour

As he told us, “I’ve always found it strange that the Muslims from Britain weren't interested in discovering their Muslim heritage in Britain, a country they were born in but knew nothing about it,” adding: “there's always been a lot of bad media coverage of the Muslims in Britain and I remember at the time, its perhaps time to showcase some positive Muslim contributions to Britain.” In his day-to-day work, this is inherently what AbdulMaalik sets out to do, too.

Dinner with Aser El Saqqa

Within his work, Aser is skilled in messaging the value of culture to explore issues of identity and roots, as well as finding ways to humanize perceived differences. He spoke about using art to facilitate the exchange of art and ideas across social and geographic boundaries and builds, leads and inspires successful teams, artists, partners and audiences with a vision of scalable, borderless art accessible to everyone as his mandate and mission.

Dinner with Anousha Payne

Understanding more about Anousha’s thoughts on fiction and myth is obviously super-interesting too. Anousha herself is from London with an Irish/Indian heritage. As she explains it, “This is something that has come into my work a lot more recently as I’ve been reading a lot of Tamil and Irish folkloric stories. Having grown up in London, I don’t feel that being mixed race has been a disadvantage in any way. But I think I’ve been very lucky with my experience and this definitely isn’t always the case. If anything I feel privileged to be able to experience two cultures.” As an artist, she is “fascinated by the material qualities of religious and spiritual objects and spaces, and how they affect our experiences: in the spiritual energy of a place, whether it is religious or not, and how this feeling comes about.”